The warmest ticket in town

Before “The Producers” opened at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood on May 29, many observers expected it to sail through the box-office roof, much as the Broadway production of the Mel Brooks musical did in its opening months in New York.

The Broadway version had also swept through the 2001 Tony Awards like a tornado, winning 12 -- more than any other show in Broadway history. And the L.A. production’s stars, Jason Alexander and Martin Short, are certainly as well known as Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, who were the stars of the Broadway production until they left in spring 2002.

“The Producers” has sailed high here, but not through the roof -- if the roof implies the maximum box-office take.

Shed no tears for the producers of “The Producers.” During the May previews and most of June, its weekly gross regularly surpassed $1.6 million, except one week when it dipped to $1.44 million. Starting in July, weekly grosses fell to the $1.3-million to $1.4-million range -- figures that are comparable to the weekly grosses from the opening months of “The Lion King” at the same theater in late 2000.

Tickets cost more for “The Producers,” however. For “The Lion King,” the initial top regular ticket price was $77; for “The Producers,” $95. The maximum potential box-office take from a week of “The Lion King” at the 2,700-seat Pantages was about $1.5 million, while the comparable figure for a week of “The Producers” is $1.89 million, according to Tom Viertel, one of the producers of “The Producers.” So “The Producers” isn’t selling quite as large a proportion of its tickets as “The Lion King” did.

No one affiliated with the show is pleading poverty just because it hasn’t sold out. Weekly running costs for the L.A. production are $650,000 to $700,000 -- the variations depending largely on advertising. Even factoring in the costs of mounting the tour (of which the L.A. engagement is the longest chapter, with its especially-for-L.A. stars), the tour -- which started last fall -- began returning profits almost simultaneously with its arrival in L.A., Viertel said.

Still, the box office now faces a new challenge. Through last week, many tickets were pre-sold to subscribers of the Ahmanson Theatre and Broadway/L.A. seasons.

“Now the good seats are yours!” proclaimed a newspaper ad for “The Producers” on Aug. 10. “For three months, season subscribers had priority for great locations. Beginning today, it’s your turn.”

The last group of the Ahmanson’s 44,000 subscribers saw the show Sunday (6,000 Broadway/L.A. subscribers had seen it earlier, many of them attending previews). The run is scheduled through Jan. 4. Suddenly, chances of obtaining good seats are better.

Not at every performance, though. A call to the box office on Aug. 19 revealed that the best pair of seats for this past Tuesday was in Row D, the fourth row. But the best seats for this past Wednesday were in RR -- almost two alphabets farther back. For Friday, seats in Row XX were as good as it got, and for both performances tonight -- ZZ, the back row of the orchestra. Generally, most of the available seats were in the theater’s more remote corners.

For the Tuesday performance, 2,416 of the 2,700 seats eventually were sold. Dale Harney of Edmonton, Canada, who sat in an enviable seat on the aisle in Row K, said his wife had bought their three tickets just a day earlier at a Ticketmaster outlet on the Sunset Strip. They couldn’t believe that it was so easy -- “actually, we had to kill three people,” Harney joked.

Meanwhile, in one of the farthest corners of the balcony, Pomona College student Shyam Viji said he bought his ticket online through Ticketmaster that day. But when he tried to get a second single ticket in the same vicinity for a friend, he couldn’t. A spokesman for the production later said that same-day Ticketmaster sales are cut off at 3 p.m.

That almost 300 seats didn’t sell for a Tuesday performance might make prospective ticket buyers think twice about turning to online scalpers, where the prices usually begin at around $195, even for a Tuesday performance.

Through Oct. 27, the producers are running a promotional campaign to lure more theatergoers to the midweek performances by offering a free meal at one of five restaurants in the Hollywood & Highland complex, along with free round-trip shuttle service to the theater, available Tuesdays to Thursdays.

Viertel said he wasn’t worried about the end of subscriptions. Advance sales for the fall look “as strong as they did for the subscription period.” The late summer “lull” is predictable, he said, because “summertime in general is very slow everywhere except in New York,” where many tourists on summer vacations go specifically to see shows.

He predicted that the L.A. grosses would head north again after local residents have returned to town and their children to school, particularly as the chances to see the show dwindle. The advertising budget will not change dramatically in response to late summer conditions, he said.

Does he have any regrets about the length of the run here?

“We could have run longer,” he replied. “But our whole strategy on the road is to leave ‘em laughing -- with the possibility that it will come back.”